The present invention relates generally to managing computer resources. More particularly, it relates to methods, systems, and computer program products for dynamically managing access to additional computer resources based on a determination of when it makes economic sense to pay for such additional resources.
In today's economic environment, businesses are increasingly examining their expenditures in terms of purchasing appropriate computer capacity/resources to meet their fluctuating business needs. Current computer systems allow consumers to balance the cost of the computer hardware with fluctuating demands placed on computer resources. For example, in most networked computer systems, computing demands fluctuate between relatively low and high values. If a company purchases a computer system that is capable of meeting peak demands, much of the capacity of the computer system will go unused during non-peak times. In addition, purchasing capacity to meet peak demand is relatively costly. If a company purchases a computer system that is capable of meeting average demand, the cost is lower, however, but the performance of the computer system suffers during peak times.
One known approach allows a computer user to buy a computer system having some resources installed, but initially disabled. When the customer determines that more capacity is needed, the customer may enter into an arrangement with the provider of the computer system to enable certain additional resources for a fixed period of time. Such an approach works out particularly well for companies having seasonal peaks in workload demands. Alternatively, companies may purchase a computer system at a reasonable cost that has the capability of providing enhanced computing power during the peak season. For example, in the case of batch processing of insurance claims in the health care industry, customers may buy a computer that has sufficient capacity to process all of their claims overnight. In a grid computing environment, a customer may have a set amount of computing power available as before, but may also send out requests for some additional available capacity from the grid for a price when it is needed. However, currently customers are not able to dynamically make appropriate decisions as to when it makes sense to pay for additional computing power, such as when sending out requests to a grid environment.
Presently, there are no known approaches for dynamically managing access to additional computer resources based on valuations of the work items being processed. Moreover, there are no known approaches for dynamically allocating computer resources based on determinations as to whether the valuations of predefined or contracted costs of processing for each one of the work items exceeds a corresponding estimated cost to process each work item. Hence, there are needs for methods, systems, and computer program products for, among other reasons, dynamically managing access to additional capacity based on a determination of when it makes economic sense to pay for additional capacity. More specifically, there are needs for dynamically managing access to additional computer resources based on determining if valuations of the work items being processed exceed the estimated costs to process such work items. Without such needs being satisfied, the true potential of managing the allocation of computer resources will not be easily achieved.